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by anticyclonerollingstone



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, maybe slight gore? nothing you're not prepared for if you made it all the way here, probably hurt/comfort, some anxiety, some paranoia, the usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 04:06:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10959309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclonerollingstone/pseuds/anticyclonerollingstone
Summary: Gabriel is holding his heart in his hands.





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**Author's Note:**

> i teased a friend with this and had no choice but to post it. oh well.

Gabriel is holding his heart in his hands.

The shock of it passes him by and he wonders how he's alive to look at it if it's not in his chest. It feels rubbery and almost dry in his fingers as he turns it over. There's a hole in the wall of it, near the top, a hole that looks like it was worn down by elements like a cave on the shore. It reminds him distantly of the motorcycle helmet of a friend whose head had had a close call with the freeway, rounded edge grated right down through the styrofoam. When he'd hold the helmet up to the light you could see a spot of light shining through.

He can feel Jack at his side, as always, and turns to him and holds his heart out to him.

"Look," Gabriel says, his voice feeling as soft in his chest as it sounds in his ears. Jack looks at the outstretched heart with his eyebrows furrowed. Gabriel can’t entirely see his face, can’t focus his eyes. He holds his heart out, the hole on display. "I told you."

"Gabriel..." Jack says, almost like a question, heavily laced with concern. He sounds miles away.

"I tried to tell you," Gabriel says, choking, chest aching. "You didn't listen."

"Gabriel," Jack says again, closer this time.

Gabriel's eyes fly open and he reaches for his chest, then scrambles up and frantically rummages around himself for the heart he must have dropped. They've done bigger things, some better and some worse, than putting a heart back in someone's chest. If he can get to Angela fast enough then -

"Hey, hey. Gabe," Jack says, sounding closer now but more frantic. He feels a hand rest gently on his shoulder and relocate to his hand, holding it still and tight. "Gabriel? I've got you."

Gabriel's heart beating hard in his throat is a welcome relief. He tilts his head back and sighs, lets out a soft, shaky cry of relief. Jack is kneeling next to him on the bed, one hand firmly on his back, the other still holding his hand tight. Gabriel looks at him, sees the same wide blue eyes scrunched down by blond eyebrows. He reaches up to touch Jack's face, make sure his expression isn't some leftover from his dream. Jack returns the gesture, sliding a hand from Gabriel's back to his cheek. 

"You're here. I'm here. It's okay," Jack says, the panic in his voice lessening with every word. He squeezes Gabriel’s hand. "It's 3:11 in the morning. You’re in bed, safe and sound. It was just a bad dream."

Gabriel leans heavily into Jack's chest and clumsily pulls the covers over his legs.

"How'd you know?" he asks softly. Jack smooths down Gabriel's hair, wraps his arms around his shoulders, pulls the covers up over him more.

"You were talking in your sleep. I didn’t know what you were saying, but it sounded tense," Jack says. He still sounds panicked. Relieved, but panicked. His voice is always so rough when he first wakes up, but he manages to make it soft. “Need to talk about it?"

Gabriel considers telling him everything then and there, at something-past-3:11 in the morning in a dark officer's suite, nightmares still tangling him in his sheets.

He wants to tell Jack, there in the precarious safety of the night, regardless of what or who might be listening from the shadows, everything about the aching confusion and fear and paranoia that follows him like something he can only see from the corner of his eye. He wants to list off all the things he keeps hearing in passing fragments that he's left to piece together at every quiet moment, all the things he’s heard from the lips of faces he doesn’t quite recognize. He wants to scrawl out the math of all of the ways those things add up to something so horrendous that he can't bring himself to think about it. He wants to draw out a map of it all for Jack, lay it out across the floor of one of their offices. How badly he wishes he could sit Jack down and ask _what do you think I should do? What do you see here that I don’t?_ Just like he's done for every tactical and personal dilemma he's had since they met.

_Can you tell me if I’m right about this?_

They work well together for a reason.

"No. It was just a bad dream," Gabriel says in quiet defeat.

But as much as he wants to, and despite everything that he knows, Gabriel can’t trust him. And Jack's not stupid, it's not like he doesn't know something is wrong. Gabriel sees it in his face and hears it in his voice and knows that it hurts him that he doesn't know what's going on. But it's not like Gabriel knows either. 

"Obviously," Jack says. He pulls himself and Gabriel up to the head of the bed and leans against the pillows. Gabriel leans against Jack's chest, the cracked and fading decal on Jack’s t-shirt pressing roughly against his cheek. He can hear Jack's heart beating strong and hard in his chest. Remembers something from so unbearably long ago: lying in some other bed on some other base on some other night. Holding his hand over the medically-induced hammering of Jack's heart, staring at each other in a shared naked fear that his heart might just stop in his chest, right there under Gabriel’s hand.

He wonders how his own tired heart sounds. If it's there. He almost wants to ask Jack to listen for him, wonders if his heartbeat might tell Jack everything that his words can't. Instead he wraps his arms tightly around Jack's waist and tries to press his face harder into his chest.

"Sorry for waking you," Gabriel says into the crackled decal of Jack's shirt. Jack's hand weaves into the curls of Gabriel's hair.

"It's okay. It happens. No need to apologize."

"Jack?"

"Yeah."

"Thanks for waking me."

"That's what I'm here for."


End file.
